🐾🐱🐾
THAT evening, after Amy’s father had returned home and they had finished supper, they decided to unwind in the living room and open Harold’s letter.
Joshua picked up the letter from the tray where they had left it and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s thicker than usual.”
“It is!” chimed Isabelle.
Harold had never needed more than one sheet of paper for his previous letters.
Isabelle looked over Joshua’s shoulder and watched curiously as he cut the seal with a letter opener. A folded map came out of the envelope.
“That boy…” muttered Isabelle. “Maybe he accidentally put a map inside instead of his letter?”
“No,” said Joshua, smiling, “this is Harold we’re talking about, after all. He probably thought explaining the location was too much of a hassle, so he just used a map instead of properly writing about it on normal paper.”
Joshua spread out the map over the tea-table.
The map was made from thin paper, but it was surprisingly large once fully opened, completely covering the small table. Just as Joshua had predicted, there were several spots where Harold had written straight on the map.
The writing, however, looked more like personal notes. He had drawn various symbols and arrows, jotted down dates, and included poorly drawn illustrations. It looked more like a picture-diary made by an elementary school student than a letter.
This was the tidings they had received after almost two months of no news.
“Seriously, Harold?” Amy grumbled with furrowed brows. “A pictographic letter that needs deciphering? Write in sentences—sentences!”
Amy’s parents looked bemused yet understanding, but Amy had grown accustomed to proper letters from her long-held correspondence with Edward, a very good pen pal. To her, the pictograph-map-letter just looked lazy.
“That’s our Harold, I suppose,” said Isabelle. “Oh! That drawing that sort of looks like a Komodo dragon…that’s some sort of magical beast, right? I wonder if this means that was where he defeated one?”
“It looks like he’s going over his recent travels,” said Joshua.
Various locations were connected by arrows, and beside them Harold had scribbled dates not only in the past but in the future, too. It almost looked like he was trying to tell them his itinerary.
Meanwhile, on the top margin of the map, some underlined writing caught Amy’s eye. This word seemed to be written badly out of excitement rather than sloppiness, and from where Amy was sitting, looking at it upside-down, it was so scribbly it looked like some sort of a spell.
“Dad,” said Amy, pointing to it, “what does this say?”
“That is…ah, I see. ‘I found Yasumi!’ What’s a yasumi? The name of some new magical beast?”
“Yasumi?” wondered Amy aloud. “Yasumi… Oh! Didn’t Hal used to play a video game with a friend named something like that?”
“You mean that one ‘miraculous support’ he would go on about?” asked Isabelle.
“It was either ‘Yasumi’ or ‘Yagami’, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t remember,” Joshua confessed.
Amy pressed her fingers against her temples and dove into the deep recesses of her memory.
“Yasumi… Yagami… But now that I think about it, I also get the feeling he called them ‘Yasmine’…”
While playing the fantasy-themed action role-playing video game he was completely obsessed with in their past lives, Harold had a fateful encounter with a player who had amazing support skills. Harold was wandering through various kingdoms, hoping to find an adventurer equally as talented in this world to join his party, and from the sound of it, he finally had.
“So basically, it means he got another party member,” deduced Joshua.
“Not quite, dear!” said Isabelle. “He only wrote that he found them, so we’re not sure whether or not they’ve joined his party.”
If there was such a skilled person in this world, they would probably have already been scooped up by another party. But Amy had a strange feeling that her brother would somehow manage to convince them to join his party, anyhow.
“Harold would probably do just about anything to win them over, even beg on his hands and knees, like he did last time.”
“He probably would,” Isabelle admitted, laughing and looking back at the map. “Oh!”
Isabelle had noticed something else Harold had written. She pointed to a place which was circled, where Harold had goofily written, “Gonna hunt heeeere!”
“That’s the special hunting zone, isn’t it?” asked Joshua.
“It is… Will Harold and the others be okay?” Amy wondered.
The place where Harold had so cheerfully indicated he was going to hunt was known as the land of death, because more monsters lived there than almost any other place on the continent. The area was home to magical beasts of all kinds—magical beast subspecies, rare magical beasts, and magical beasts that were incredibly difficult to defeat.
A monster’s difficulty—in other words, the danger they posed—was proportional to the rewards adventurers would receive after the hunt was completed. Therefore, the special hunting zone had become a location only attempted by skilled adventurers or those who made their living by bounty hunting.
Naturally, if an adventurer without any real skill set foot there, there was no guarantee they’d make it out alive.
Harold and Amy may not have been best friends who did everything together, but they did care for each other a lot as siblings. Amy was worried for her older brother.
Joshua chuckled and put a hand on his chin.
“At Harold’s rank, they’re probably at a high enough level that they can take on the challenge. Nothing is certain, though. Their situation will constantly change depending on which magical beasts they encounter.”
“That’s likely,” said Amy.
“Nevertheless, if he goes through the formal procedures beforehand, they should have a member of the guild experienced in the special hunting zone to guide them. And besides, Harold might not always act like it, but he doesn’t overestimate his own abilities. He can tell when it’s time to retreat, so he probably won’t do anything reckless.”
“He’s right,” said Isabelle. “Hal never likes to work too hard, you know, and he’s not the type of guy to be motivated by macho pride. He’d be the first to get out of a hairy situation.”
“I hope so…”
“Oh! Look, Amy! Over here…”
Joshua followed the arrow through several towns until it landed on the final destination—the Royal Capital of Luducia, where Amy and her parents currently stood.
A date was written down, and above that, a simple picture of two clashing swords.
“That’s the date of the tournament, isn’t it?” asked Isabelle.
“I haven’t heard anything about it, but maybe he’s going to participate, too,” said Joshua. “If he’s scheduled this in advance, he probably won’t overdo it in the special hunting zone beforehand.”
As long as their application was submitted in advance, anyone could participate in the athletic tournament. And if the applicant was applying from outside of the kingdom, the process could even be done through a guild.
Amy and her parents exchanged glances.
“Does this mean Harold’s coming home?” Amy asked.
“He’s at least planning to be at the athletic tournament, isn’t he?” Isabelle said. “In that case, maybe he’s visiting the special hunting zone as a way to test out his strength.”
“In the special hunting zone? That seems like overkill…” Amy remarked. “But I see what you mean. In that case, maybe I won’t have to worry about him so much. Oh, Tigger!”
Tigger, who had been quietly sitting beside Amy, suddenly hopped onto the table—right on top of the map.
The thin paper wrinkled under his paws.
“Oh, dear!” Isabelle cried.
“Tigger! No, Tigger!”
Whether it had been something taught to him when he was with his original owner or during his stay with the Duchess of Coverdale, Tigger had never jumped on tables since Amy had adopted him.
But now, not only had he jumped on one for the first time, but he had also ignored Amy’s command to get down. Instead, Tigger leisurely tucked his forefeet under his body and sat down.
“Oh! He looks like a giant loaf of bread!” Amy exclaimed.
“He looks so comfortable,” sighed Isabelle. “It’s hard to scold him when he looks like that, isn’t it?”
“Maybe he just wanted to sit on paper?” Joshua suggested. “The table is so covered up, Tigger probably thinks he’s sitting on a giant piece of paper, not a table!”
“You think so?”
Tigger yawned widely as the three humans chattered around him, his gold eyes hazy and sleepy.
Tigger was usually shy around anyone but Amy, but he had become visibly more relaxed around the other members of the family. It warmed Amy’s heart every time she saw it.
“I don’t like him being on the table, but he does look really cute like that… Tigger, why don’t you come here?” Amy said, crouching down and holding out both arms.
Tigger meowed back in response and slowly started to move. He took a few steps, crinkling the thin paper more along the way, and then leaped into Amy’s arms.
Amy caught him and held him as she sat on the floor. Tigger squinted his eyes, looking relaxed, as Amy raked her hands through his soft fur. She smiled back at him.
“Still getting along well, eh?” remarked Joshua.
“Yes! I love him so much!”
Amy had never been allowed to have a pet in her previous life, so in this one, she had devoted all her time and energy into studying magic just so she could have Tigger.
For Amy, magic and animals had already become an integral part of her life—a part of herself. At this point, removing them would be unthinkable.
Isabelle giggled and turned to her husband.
“It looks like he’s got quite a formidable opponent with this one. Don’t you pity him a tiny bit, dear?”
“What for?”
“Just as he thinks he’s overcome a massive hurdle in winning you over, he’ll realize there’s an even greater hurdle towering over him.”
“…It’ll be a test, I suppose,” Joshua said, shrugging his shoulders.
Isabelle smiled as she watched her husband fold up the slightly wrinkled map.